When night fell damp and weighted about you
And bones hot from burning under these damaged days,
The moon lit your fingers and made them pale
By the page you were writing on.
A hand trembled as it reached for another’s,
A hand trembled, reaching
As it pulled back the covers.
What removed you from the equation of being
Only numbers that dance and seem to form differences,
But are made from the same divisions of empty signs:
As the proposition of time and stories told
Under these varying patterns of light,
You weave with this music turning up the corners
Of leaves that roam this room
Reminding the memories, troubled, to be still.
These flowers are not at home
In this unstirred, conformed place,
What a cowed thing brought these wild things in,
Like a question.
A hand trembled as it arranged them in a vase,
A hand trembled arranging the question,
A hand moved, mechanical, across the clock,
I see that all these moving hands are mine.
